A recent announcement is likely to generate a lot of controversy. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the CDC has recommended that boys and young men be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV). Previously the guidelines said boys “could” be given the HPV vaccine. Now they have recommended that boys age 11 to 12 “should” be vaccinated, as well as boys age 13 to 21 who have not already had the full series of 3 shots. The vaccine can also be given to boys as young as 9 and to young men age 22 to 26.

The vaccine was originally promoted as a way to prevent cervical cancer. Boys don’t have a cervix, so why should they be subjected to a “girl’s” vaccine? There are some good science-based reasons:

Boys can transmit the virus to female sex partners later in life, leading to cervical cancer in women.

More importantly, boys themselves can also be directly harmed by the virus. It can cause genital warts, cancer of the head and neck (tongue, tonsils and throat), anal and penile cancer, respiratory papillomatosis, and giant condyloma of Buschke and Lowenstein. In rare cases, immunocompromised patients can develop epidermodysplasia verruciformis.

Some of these conditions are not common, and the most common one, genital warts, may sound trivial. But “a picture is worth a thousand words,” so here is a link to a picture of a giant condyloma of Buschke and Lowenstein as an example of what HPV can do to the unvaccinated. The picture is not pleasant. If you are squeamish, you may not want to look at it. If you can’t even stand to look at it, imagine how devastating it would be to have it appear on your own body, and how nice it would be to be vaccinated against it.